Thursday, March 25, 2010

In the wake of passage of health-care reform, the loony right is becoming even more dangerous than usual. They are throwing bricks through the windows of Democratic offices; they are praying for the death of the President; they are even threatening to kill children.

No, these are not Minutemen hiding in some survivalist Idaho bunker. These are not Klansmen burning crosses in Mississippi. These are not neo-Nazis marching in Skokie. These are your neighbors, your pastors, your elected representatives.

Bricks have been thrown through the windows of local Democratic headquarters in Ohio and Kansas. Glass has been shattered at the offices of Louis Slaughter (D-NY) in Niagara Falls and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in Tucson. A note was left behind by a vandal at another site. It referenced Barry Goldwater's, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

A fundamentalist California preacher named Wiley Drake urged his flock to pray for the death of all congressmen who voted for the health-care reform bill. (Now that's a Christian attitude!) Racist and homophobic slurs were hurled at prominent Democrats Barney Frank and John Lewis.

And it's going to get worse, if you listen to the extremist rhetoric of the fringe right. Like whiny children who can't accept defeat, Republicans are still trying to derail health care with parliamentary technicalities and whacky amendments. Apparently they believe in democracy only when it works for them.

America is a scary place now, and I worry for the safety of anyone on the left who speaks his or her mind in public. We are like the Jews of Germany in the 1930s, huddled in our homes hoping that fascists don't throw bricks through our windows or haul us off to concentration camps. They are armed, and we are not. And they have Goebbels Limbaugh spewing hate on the radio all day, inciting the worst of the lot to take action.

Unlike the German Jews, however, I won't go quietly. In my little corner of the Midwest, I am still loudly resisting the bastards, and I will not stop. See my previous post, entitled "The GOP (Gathering Of Primitives) At My Door," for tips on how to deal with these mindless fanatics. Remember the words of Huey Long, "Fascism will come to America, but they will call it democracy. But only if we let it happen."

Sunday, March 21, 2010

We hear a lot about the radical right-wing Catholic anti-abortionists. They are the living expression of official Church dogma. But did you also know that the Catholic Church is anti-war and anti-death penalty. There are no public expressions of this dogma. Why? Part of the reason is that the right wing has taken over the Catholic Church, and left-wing Catholics have been bullied into submission. Not only do leftists not have a voice in the Church, they have been forced underground. What do I mean? Here in southern Illinois, the eastern wing of the greater St. Louis archdiocese (no small lot, Catholics make up about half of the area's seven million citizens), anti-war, pro-choice, humanist Catholics have been banned from gathering on church properties. I learned this from a friend named Mary, who is constantly trying to re-convert me. I am a Jesuit-educated, anti-Catholic, secular-progressive heretic, and she still clings to the old faith even though, like all disciples, she is a living contradiction.

Anyway, we had a conversation yesterday which went something like this:

ME: Whatever happened to the left-wing voice of the Church...you know the humanist movement that thrived after the proclamations of Vatican II?

MARY: I don't know. We used to meet in small groups in the basement of St. Clare's. But they banned the meetings a few years ago when they found out we were pro-choice.

ME: You mean they kicked you off church property?

MARY: Yeah, we started meeting in private homes, but they found out about that too and the priests started pressuring us to decease. We tried gathering at undisclosed locations, but it just became too much of a hassle.

ME: It's like Germany in the 1930s. Why do you want to remain a member of St. Goebbels' parish?

MARY: I still believe...I still have faith.

ME: Faith in what? That Father Pedophile will be tried, convicted and defrocked after raping his next 10-year-old? That's why the Church is anti-death penalty...its afraid priests will be fried for diddling altar boys.

(Note: Mary knows me and just shrugs and laughs at my irreverence.)

MARY: I believe we all have spirits that will live on beyond us.

ME: What the fuck does that have to do with organized fascism...err...religion?

MARY: We were both raised in the same traditions. You chose to fall away. I still believe in a just and loving God.

ME: I did not choose to fall away. The Jesuits made it perfectly clear to my young mind that intellect and faith are at odds with one another. And that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God. You either leap the abyss from disbelief to belief...or you don't. But it has nothing to do with reason.

MARY: That's why when I get to heaven I'll have to pray for your soul to join me there.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

It's long been my contention that right-wingers are right-wingers for one or more of these reasons: fear, ignorance of the facts, and just good old-fashioned stupidity. The most radical ones suffer from all three maladies. Now there is scientific proof to back up my suspicions. According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch column written by Kevin Horrigan, Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, a social psychologist, concludes that "...young adults who described themselves as 'not at all religious' and 'very liberal' politically had adolescent IQ scores that averaged 11 points higher than the young adults who described themselves as 'very conservative' and 'very religious'...11 points is significant, because liberalism (defined as caring about large groups of people you'll never meet) is a very new thing for humans."

Kanazawa's contention is, then, that conservatives are much less evolved than liberals. Conservatives, like their neanderthal ancestors, care only about themselves and like individuals. It's a survival instinct that manifests itself in lower forms of species. For right-wingers, the needs of others are irrelevant. They care nothing for the greater good. Their myopic sensibilities extend to their own kind and no one else.

We see the effects across the sociocultural and political spectrum. Republicans, 99% white, are vehemently opposed to things which would benefit those not of their tribe, i.e., blacks, Latinos, Muslims, etc. Thus, reasonable policies that address the greater good--universal health care, affirmative action, civil liberties, social welfare programs, access to abortion, brotherhood, equal rights, world peace--have always and will always be despised by conservatives.

What can be done about it? The obvious answer is to elect liberals. However, we all know this is not feasible in Republican strongholds. We are still afflicted by millions upon millions of those who have not sufficiently advanced on the evolutionary scale. I can just hear the right screaming at me, "Evolution is a myth. We were created by God." My response? Then pay heed to your Good Book. God said, "What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?"

We liberals must try to inform and educate when confronted by a lower form of life.

Friday, March 12, 2010

I was so moved by author James Douglass's address on 11/22/09, the 46th commemoration of President Kennedy's assassination, that I am reprinting it here. It rings of the truth and is thoroughly documented, citations and all. It is long, but it is an eloquent and worthwhile read. And it's a history lesson for us all.

The Hope of Confronting the Unspeakable; A speech by the Author of:

JFK and the Unspeakablehttp://www.maryknollsocietymall.org/description.cfm?ISBN=978-1-57075-755...

This book is the first volume of a projected trilogy. Orbis Books hascommissioned James W. Douglass to write three books on theassassinations of the 1960's. The second will be on the murders ofMalcolm X and Martin Luther King, while the third will be on theassassination of Bobby Kennedy.

I want to speak tonight about the hope that comes from ourconfronting the truth of the assassination of President Kennedy.Concerned friends have asked me over the years if engaging in such aprobe into darkness hasn’t made me profoundly depressed. On thecontrary, it has given me great hope. As Martin Luther King said, thetruth crushed to earth will rise again. Gandhi spoke hopefully ofexperiments in truth, because they take us into the most powerful forceon earth and in existence – truth-force, satyagraha. That is how Ithink of this work, as an experiment in truth – one that will open usup, both personally and as a country, to a process of nonviolenttransformation. I believe this experiment we are doing into the darktruth of Dallas (and of Washington) can be the most hopeful experienceof our lives. But as you know, it does require patience and tenacity toconfront the unspeakable. We, first of all, need to take the time torecognize the sources in our history for what happened in Dallas onNovember 22, 1963.

The doctrine of "plausible deniability" in an old government documentprovides us with a source of the assassination of President Kennedy.The document was issued in 1948, one year after the CIA wasestablished, 15 years before JFK’s murder. That document, NationalSecurity Council directive 10/2, on June 18, 1948, “gave the highestsanction of the [U.S.] government to a broad range of covertoperations” – propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, subversion of allkinds – that were seen as necessary to “win” the Cold War against theCommunists. The government’s condition for those covert activities byU.S. agencies, coordinated by the CIA, was that they be “so planned andexecuted that…if uncovered the US government can plausibly disclaim anyresponsibility for them.”

In the 1950’s, under the leadership of CIA Director Allen Dulles, thedoctrine of “plausible deniability” became the CIA’s green light toassassinate national leaders, conduct secret military operations, andoverthrow governments that our government thought were on the wrongside in the Cold War. “Plausible deniability” meant our intelligenceagencies, acting as paramilitary groups, had to lie and cover theirtracks so effectively that there would be no trace of U.S. governmentresponsibility for criminal activities on an ever-widening scale.The man who proposed this secret, subversive process in 1948, diplomatGeorge Kennan, said later, in light of its consequences, that it was“the greatest mistake I ever made.” President Harry Truman, under whomthe CIA was created, and during whose presidency the plausibledeniability doctrine was authorized, had deep regrets. He said in astatement on December 22, 1963:“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has beendiverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational andat times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to troubleand may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.“We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions andfor our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is somethingabout the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadowover our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.” Truman later remarked: “The CIA was set up by me for the sole purposeof getting all the available information to the president. It was notintended to operate as an international agency engaged in strangeactivities.”

President Truman’s sharp warning about the CIA, and the fact thatwarning was published one month to the day after JFK’s assassination,should have given this country pause. However, his statement appearedonly in an early edition of The Washington Post, then vanished withoutcomment from public view.

What George Kennan and Harry Truman realized much too late was that, inthe name of national security, they had unwittingly allowed an alienforce to invade a democracy. As a result, we now had to deal with agovernment agency authorized to carry out a broad range of criminalactivities on an international scale, theoretically accountable to thepresident but with no genuine accountability to anyone. Plausibledeniability became a rationale for the CIA’s interpretation of what theexecutive branch’s wishes might be. But for the Agency’s crimes toremain plausibly deniable, the less said the better – to the pointwhere CIA leaders’ creative imaginations simply took over. It was allfor the sake of “winning” the Cold War by any means necessary andwithout implicating the more visible heads of the government. Oneassumption behind Kennan’s proposal unleashing the CIA for its waragainst Communism was that the Agency’s criminal power could beconfined to covert action outside the borders of the United States,with immunity from its lethal power granted to U.S. citizens. Thatassumption proved to be wrong.

During the Cold War, the hidden growth of the CIA’s autonomous powercorresponded to the public growth of what was called a fortress state.What had been a struggling post-war democracy in our country wasreplaced by the institutions of a national security state. PresidentTruman had laid the foundations for that silent takeover by hismomentous decision to end the Second World War by a demonstration ofnuclear weapons on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order tostop a Soviet advance to Japan. Truman’s further, post-war decision forU.S. nuclear dominance in the world rather than allowing forinternational control of nuclear weapons was his second disastrousmistake, in terms of initiating the nuclear arms race in the world andsubverting democracy in the U.S.A. A democracy within a nationalsecurity state cannot survive. The president’s decision to base oursecurity on nuclear weapons created the contradiction of a democracyruled by the dictates of the Pentagon. A democratic national securitystate is a contradiction in terms.

The insecure basis of our security then became weapons that coulddestroy the planet. To protect the security of that illusory means ofsecurity, which was absolute destructive power, we now needed a rulingelite of national security managers with an authority above that of ourelected representatives. So from that point on, our military-industrialmanagers made the real decisions of state. President Truman simplyratified their decisions and entrenched their power, as he did with theestablishment of the CIA, and as his National Security Council did withits endorsement of plausible deniability. His successor, PresidentEisenhower, also failed to challenge in his presidency what he warnedagainst at its end -- the military-industrial complex. He left thecritical task of resisting that anti-democratic power in the hands ofthe next president, John Kennedy. When President Kennedy then stood upto the Pentagon, the CIA, and the military-industrial complex, he wastreated as a traitor. His attempt to save the planet from the weaponsof his own state was regarded as treason. The doctrine of plausibledeniability allowed for the assassination of a president seen as anational security risk himself.

The CIA’s “plausible deniability” for crimes of state, as exemplifiedby JFK’s murder, corresponds in our politics to what the Trappist monkand spiritual writer Thomas Merton called “the Unspeakable.” Mertonwrote about the unspeakable in the 1960’s, when an elusive, systemicevil was running rampant through this country and the world. TheVietnam War, the escalating nuclear arms race, and the interlockingmurders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and RobertKennedy were all signs of the unspeakable.

For Merton, the unspeakable was ultimately a void, an emptiness of anymeaning, an abyss of lies and deception. He wrote the followingdescription of the unspeakable shortly after the publication of TheWarren Report, which he could have been describing: “[The Unspeakable]is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before thewords are said; the void that gets into the language of public andofficial declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, andmakes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.”

The void of the unspeakable is the dark abyss, the midnight reality ofplausible deniability, that we face when we peer into our nationalsecurity state’s murder of President Kennedy. And that is preciselywhere hope begins.

Why President Kennedy was murdered can be, I believe, a profound sourceof hope to us all, when we truly understand his story.Now how can that possibly be? The why of his murder as a source of hope?Let’s begin with the way Kennedy himself looked at the question.One summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, PresidentKennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-sellingnovel that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK saidhe would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedydiscussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coupin the U.S. These words were spoken by him after the Bay of Pigs andbefore the Cuban Missile Crisis:“It’s possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditionswould have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a youngPresident, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certainuneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind hisback, but this would be written off as the usual militarydissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bayof Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, ‘Is he too young andinexperienced?’ The military would almost feel that it was theirpatriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of thenation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would bedefending if they overthrew the elected establishment.”Pausing a moment, he went on, “Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs,it could happen.”

Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concludedwith an old Navy phrase, “But it won’t happen on my watch.” Let’s remember that JFK gave himself three strikes before he would beout by a coup, although he bravely said it wouldn’t happen on his watch.

As we know, and as he knew, the young president John Kennedy didhave a Bay of Pigs. The president bitterly disappointed the CIA, themilitary, and the CIA-trained Cuban exile brigade by deciding to acceptdefeat at the Bay of Pigs rather than escalate the battle. Kennedyrealized after the fact that he had been drawn into a CIA scenariowhose authors assumed he would be forced by circumstances to drop hisadvance restrictions against the use of U.S. combat forces. He had beenlied to in such a way that, in order to “win” at the Bay of Pigs, hewould be forced to send in U.S. troops. But JFK surprised the CIA andthe military by choosing instead to accept a loss. “They couldn’tbelieve,” he said, “that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and tryto save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.” We know how JFK reacted to the CIA’s setting him up. He was furious.When the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, he saidhe wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it tothe winds.”

He ordered an investigation into the whole affair, under the verywatchful eyes of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.He fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Richard Bissell,Jr., and Deputy Director General Charles Cabell. That was a hugedecision – firing the top of the CIA’s hierarchy, including thelegendary leader who had come to personify the agency, Allen Dulles.The president then took steps “to cut the CIA budget in 1962 and againin 1963, aiming at a 20 per cent reduction by 1966.” John Kennedy wascutting back the CIA’s power in very concrete ways, step by step.We know how the CIA and the Cuban exile community regarded Kennedy inturn because of his refusal to escalate the battle at the Bay of Pigs.They hated him for it. They did not forget what they thought wasunforgivable.

In terms of JFK’s own analysis of the threat of an overthrow of hispresidency, he saw the Bay of Pigs as the first strike against him. Itwas the first big stand he took against his national security elite,and therefore the first cause of a possible coup d’etat.However, in terms of our constitution, our genuine security, and worldpeace, the position Kennedy took in facing down the CIA and themilitary at the Bay of Pigs, rather than surrendering to their will,was in itself a source of hope. No previous post-war president hadshown such courage. Truman and Eisenhower had, in effect, turned overthe power of their office to their national security managers. Kennedywas instead acting like he really was the president of this country –by saying a strong no to the security elite on a critical issue. If wethe people had truly understood what he was doing then on our behalf,we would have thought the president’s stand a deeply hopeful one.

In terms of his Seven Days in May analysis of a coming coup, JohnKennedy did have a second “Bay of Pigs.” The president alienated theCIA and the military a second time by his decisions during the CubanMissile Crisis.

JFK had to confront the unspeakable in the Missile Crisis in the formof total nuclear war. At the height of that terrifying conflict, hefelt the situation spiraling out of control, especially because of theactions of his generals. For example, with both sides on hair-triggeralert, the U.S. Air Force test-fired missiles from California acrossthe Pacific, deliberately trying to provoke the Soviets in a way thatcould justify our superior U.S. forces blanketing the USSR with anall-out nuclear attack. As we know from Kennedy’s secretly tapedmeeting with his Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 19, 1962, the Chiefswere pushing him relentlessly to launch a pre-emptive strike on Cuba,and ultimately the Soviet Union. In this encounter the Chiefs’ disdainfor their young commander-in-chief is summed up by Air Force Chief ofStaff General Curtis LeMay when he says:

LeMay: “This [blockade and political action] is almost as bad as theappeasement [of Hitler] at Munich…I think that a blockade, andpolitical talk, would be considered by a lot of our friends andneutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot ofour own citizens would feel that way too.“In other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.”President Kennedy responds: “What did you say?”LeMay: “I say, you’re in a pretty bad fix.”President Kennedy: [laughing] “You’re in with me, personally.”

As the meeting draws to a close, Kennedy rejects totally the JointChiefs’ arguments for a quick, massive attack on Cuba. The presidentthen leaves the room but the tape keeps on recording. Two or three ofthe generals remain, and one says to LeMay, “You pulled the rug rightout from under him.”

LeMay: “Jesus Christ. What the hell do you mean?”OtherGeneral: “…He’s finally getting around to the word ‘escalation.’ Ifsomebody could keep ‘em from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal, that’sour problem…”

The White House tapes show Kennedy questioning and resisting themounting pressure to bomb Cuba coming from both the Joint Chiefs andthe Executive Committee of the National Security Council. At the sametime, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, the two men most responsiblefor the Cuban Missile Crisis, seemed locked in a hopeless ideologicalconflict. The U.S. and Soviet leaders had been following Cold Warpolicies that now seemed to be moving inexorably toward a war ofextermination.

Yet, as we have since learned, Kennedy and Khrushchev had been engagedin a secret correspondence for over a year that gave signs of hope.Even as they moved publicly step by step toward a Cold War climax thatwould almost take the world over the edge with them, they were at thesame time smuggling confidential letters back and forth that recognizedeach other’s humanity and hoped for a solution. They were publicenemies who, in the midst of deepening turmoil, were secretly learningsomething approaching trust in each other.

On what seemed the darkest day in the crisis, when a Soviet missile hadshot down a U2 spy plane over Cuba, intensifying the alreadyoverwhelming pressures on Kennedy to bomb Cuba, the president sent hisbrother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, secretly to Soviet AmbassadorAnatoly Dobrynin. RFK told Dobrynin, as Dobrynin reported toKhrushchev, that the president “didn’t know how to resolve thesituation. The military is putting great pressure on him…Even if hedoesn’t want or desire a war, something irreversible could occuragainst his will. That is why the President is asking for help to solvethis problem.”

In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalled a further, chilling sentence fromRobert Kennedy’s appeal to Dobrynin: “If the situation continues muchlonger, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrowhim and seize power.”

Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita’s son, has described his father’s thoughtswhen he read Dobrynin’s wired report relaying John Kennedy’s plea: “Thepresident was calling for help: that was how father interpreted RobertKennedy’s talk with our ambassador.”

At a moment when the world was falling into darkness, Kennedy did whatfrom his generals’ standpoint was intolerable and unforgivable. JFK notonly rejected his generals’ pressures for war. Even worse, thepresident then reached out to their enemy, asking for help. That wastreason.

When Nikita Khrushchev had received Kennedy’s plea for help in Moscow,he turned to his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko and said, “We have tolet Kennedy know that we want to help him.”

Khrushchev stunned himself by what he had just said: Did he really wantto help his enemy, Kennedy? Yes, he did. He repeated the word to hisforeign minister:“Yes, help. We now have a common cause, to save the world from thosepushing us toward war.”

How do we understand that moment? The two most heavily armed leaders inhistory, on the verge of total nuclear war, suddenly joined handsagainst those on both sides pressuring them to attack. Khrushchevordered the immediate withdrawal of his missiles, in return forKennedy’s public pledge never to invade Cuba and his secret promise towithdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey – as he would in fact do. The twoCold War enemies had turned, so that each now had more in common withhis opponent than either had with his own generals. As a result of thatturn toward peace, one leader would be assassinated thirteen monthslater. The other, left without his peacemaking partner, would beoverthrown the following year. Yet because of their turn away fromnuclear war, today we are still living and struggling for peace on thisearth. Hope is alive. We still have a chance.

What can we call that transforming moment when Kennedy asked his enemyfor help and Khrushchev gave it?

From a Buddhist standpoint, it was enlightenment of a cosmic kind.Others might call it a divine miracle. Readers of the Christian Gospelscould say that Kennedy and Khrushchev were only doing what Jesus said:“Love your enemies.” That would be “love” as Gandhi understood it, loveas the other side of truth, a respect and understanding of ouropponents that goes far enough to integrate their truth into our own.In the last few months of Kennedy’s life, he and Khrushchev werewalking that extra mile where each was beginning to see the other’struth.

Neither John Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev was a saint. Each was deeplycomplicit in policies that brought humankind to the brink of nuclearwar. Yet, when they encountered the void, then by turning to each otherfor help, they turned humanity toward the hope of a peaceful planet.

John Kennedy’s next “Bay of Pigs,” his next critical conflict with hisnational security state, was his American University Address. SaturdayReview editor Norman Cousins summed up the significance of thisremarkable speech: “At American University on June 10, 1963, PresidentKennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.”

I believe it is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance ofPresident Kennedy’s American University address. It was a decisivesignal to both Nikita Khrushchev, on the one hand, and JFK’s nationalsecurity advisers, on the other, that he was serious about making peacewith the Communists. After he told the graduating class at AmericanUniversity that the subject of his speech was “the most important topicon earth: world peace,” he asked:“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek?”He answered, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by Americanweapons of war.”

Kennedy’s rejection of “a Pax Americana enforced on the world byAmerican weapons of war” was an act of resistance to themilitary-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex wastotally dependent on “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by Americanweapons of war.” That Pax Americana policed by the Pentagon wasconsidered the system’s indispensable, hugely profitable means ofcontaining and defeating Communism. At his own risk Kennedy wasrejecting the foundation of the Cold War system.

In its place, as a foundation for peace, the president put acompassionate description of the suffering of the Russian people. Theyhad been our allies during World War Two and had suffered mightily. Yeteven their World War Two devastation would be small compared to theeffects of a nuclear war on both their country and ours.In his speech, Kennedy turned around the question that was always askedwhen it came to prospects for peace – the question, “What about theRussians?” It was assumed the Russians would take advantage of any movewe might make toward peace.

Kennedy asked instead, “What about us?” He said, “Our attitude [towardpeace] is as essential as theirs.” What about our attitude to thenuclear arms race?

Within the overarching theology of our country, a theology of totalgood versus total evil, that was a heretical question, comingespecially from the president of the United States.Kennedy said he wanted to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty with theSoviet Union in Moscow – in their capitol, not ours – as soon aspossible. To clear the way for such a treaty, he said he was suspendingU.S. atmospheric tests unilaterally.

John Kennedy’s strategy of peace penetrated the Soviet government’sdefenses far more effectively than any missile could have done. TheSoviet press, which was accustomed to censoring U.S. governmentstatements, published the entire speech all across the country. Sovietradio stations broadcast and rebroadcast the speech to the Sovietpeople. In response to Kennedy’s turn toward peace, the Sovietgovernment even stopped jamming all Western broadcasts into theircountry.

Nikita Khrushchev was deeply moved by the American University Address.He said Kennedy had given “the greatest speech by any AmericanPresident since Roosevelt.”

JFK’s speech was received less favorably in his own country. The NewYork Times reported his government’s skepticism: “Generally there wasnot much optimism in official Washington that the President’sconciliation address at American University would produce agreement ona test ban treaty or anything else.” In contrast to the Soviet mediathat were electrified by the speech, the U.S. media ignored ordownplayed it. For the first time, Americans had less opportunity toread and hear their president’s words than did the Russian people. Aturn-around was occurring in the world on different levels. Whereasnuclear disarmament had suddenly become feasible, Kennedy’s position inhis own government had become precarious.

President Kennedy’s next critical conflict with his national securitystate, propelling him toward the coup d’etat he saw as possible, wasthe Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that he signed with NikitaKhrushchev on July 25, 1963, six weeks after the American UniversityAddress. The president had done an end run around the Joint Chiefs ofStaff. He negotiated the Test Ban Treaty without consulting them,because they opposed it.

Kennedy was fiercely determined but not optimistic that the Test BanTreaty be ratified by the defense-conscious Senate. In early August, hetold his advisers that getting Senate ratification of the agreementwould be “almost in the nature of a miracle.” He said if a Senate votewere held right then it would fall far short of the necessarytwo-thirds.

Kennedy initiated a whirlwind public education campaign on the treaty,coordinated by Saturday Review editor Normal Cousins, who directed acommittee of activists. By the end of August, the tide of congressionalmail had gone from fifteen to one against a test ban to three to twoagainst.

In September public opinion polls showed a turnaround. 80 percent ofthe American people were now in favor of the Test Ban Treaty. OnSeptember 24, 1963, the Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 80 to19 – 14 more than the required two-thirds. No other singleaccomplishment in the White House gave Kennedy greater satisfaction.On September 20, Kennedy spoke to the United Nations. He suggested thatits members see the Test Ban Treaty as a beginning and engage togetherin an experiment in peace:“Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposed,and was willing to sign, a Limited Test Ban treaty. Today that treatyhas been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not removebasic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it can be alever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, wassaid to have declared to his friends: ‘Give me a place where I canstand – and I shall move the world.’“My fellow inhabitant of this planet: Let us take our stand here inthis Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, canmove the world to a just and lasting peace.”

When he said these words, John Kennedy was secretly engaging in anotherrisky experiment in peace. That same day at the United Nations, Kennedytold UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson that his assistant William Attwoodshould go ahead “to make discreet contact” with Cuba’s UN AmbassadorCarlos Lechuga. Was Fidel Castro interested in a dialogue with JohnKennedy? A strongly affirmative answer would come back from Castro, whohad been repeatedly urged by Khrushchev to begin trusting Kennedy.Kennedy and Castro actually began that dialogue on normalizingU.S.-Cuban relations, through the mediation of French journalist JeanDaniel who personally visited both men in the month leading up to theassassination. Daniel was actually eating lunch with Castro in his homeon November 22, conveying Kennedy’s hopeful words, when the Cubanpremier was phoned with the news of Kennedy’s death. Castro’s sombercomment to Daniel was: “Everything is changed. Everything is going tochange.”

On October 11, 1963, President Kennedy issued a top-secret order tobegin withdrawing the U.S. military from Vietnam. In National SecurityAction memorandum 263, he ordered that 1,000 U.S. military personnel bewithdrawn from Vietnam by the end of 1963, and that the bulk of U.S.personnel be taken out by the end of 1965.Kennedy decided on his withdrawal policy, against the arguments of mostof his advisers, at a contentious October 2 National Security Councilmeeting. When Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was leaving the meetingto announce the withdrawal to the White House reporters, “the Presidentcalled to him, ‘And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots,too.’”

In fact, it would not mean that at all. After JFK’s assassination, hiswithdrawal policy was quietly voided. In light of the futureconsequences of Dallas, it was not only John Kennedy who was murderedon November 22, 1963, but 58,000 other Americans and over three millionVietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

In his reflections on Seven Days in May, John Kennedy had given himselfthree Bay-of-Pigs-type conflicts with his national security statebefore a possible coup. What about six?(1) The Bay of Pigs.(2) The Cuban Missile Crisis.(3) The American University Address.(4) The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.(5) The beginning of a back-channel dialogue with Fidel Castro.(6) JFK’s order to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam.This, however, is a short list of the increasing conflicts between Kennedyand his national security state.

We can add to the list a seventh Bay of Pigs – the steel crisis,in which he profoundly alienated the military industrial complex beforethe Cuban Missile Crisis even took place. The steel crisis was ashowdown the president had with U.S. Steel and seven other steelcompanies over their price-fixing violations of an agreement he hadnegotiated between U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers’ union. In ahead-on confrontation with the ruling elite of Big Steel, JFK orderedthe Defense Department to switch huge military contracts away from themajor steel companies to the smaller, more loyal contractors that hadnot defied him. After the big steel companies bitterly backed down fromtheir price raises, JFK and his brother, Robert, were denounced assymbols of “ruthless power” by the Wall Street power brokers at thecenter of the military industrial complex. By an editorial titled, “Steel: The Ides of April” (the month in whichKennedy faced down the steel executives), Henry Luce’s Fortune magazinecalled to readers’ minds the soothsayer’s warning in Shakespeare of theassassination of Julius Caesar. Fortune was warning Kennedy that hisactions had confirmed the worst fears of corporate America about hispresidency, and would have dire consequences. As interpreted by themost powerful people in the nation, the steel crisis was a logicalprelude to Dallas. It was a seventh Bay of Pigs.

An eighth Bay of Pigs was Kennedy’s diplomatic opening to the fierythird-world leadership of President Sukarno of Indonesia. Sukarno was“the most outspoken proponent of Third World neutralism in the ColdWar.” He had actually coined the term “Third World.” The CIA wantedSukarno dead. It wanted what it saw as his pro-communist “globalorientation” obliterated. During Eisenhower’s presidency, the CIArepeatedly tried to kill and overthrow Sukarno but failed.JFK, however, chose to work with Sukarno, hoping to win him over as anally, which he did. Sukarno came to love Kennedy. The U.S. presidentresolved what seemed a hopeless conflict between Indonesia and itsformer colonial master, the Netherlands, averting a war. To the CIA’sdismay, in 1961 Kennedy welcomed Sukarno to the White House. Mostsignificantly, three days before his assassination, President Kennedysaid he was willing to accept Sukarno’s invitation to visit Indonesiathe following spring. His visit to Indonesia would have dramatized in avery visible way Kennedy’s support of Third World nationalism, a seachange in U.S. government policy. That decision to visit Sukarno was aneighth Bay of Pigs.

Kennedy’s Indonesian policy was also killed in Dallas, with horrendousconsequences. After Lyndon Johnson became president, the CIA finallysucceeded in overthrowing Sukarno in a massive purge of suspectedCommunists that ended up killing 500,000 to one million Indonesians.

Last Sunday I interviewed Sergei Khrushchev about an importantlate development in the relationship between his father and PresidentKennedy. In his interview, Mr. Khrushchev confirmed that his father haddecided in November 1963 to accept President Kennedy’s repeatedproposal that the U.S. and the Soviet Union fly to the moon together.In Kennedy’s September 20, 1963, speech to the United Nations, he hadonce again stated his hope for such a joint expedition to the moon.However, neither American nor Soviet military leaders, jealous of theirrocket secrets, were ready to accept his initiative. Nikita Khrushchev,siding with his own rocket experts, felt that he was still forced todecline Kennedy’s proposal.

JFK was looking beyond the myopia of the generals and scientists onboth sides of the East-West struggle. He knew that merging theirmissile technologies in a peaceful project would also help defuse theCold War. It was part of his day-by-day strategy of peace.Sergei Khrushchev said his father talked to him about a week beforeKennedy’s death on the president’s idea for a joint lunar mission.Nikita Khrushchev had broken ranks with his rocket scientists. He nowthought he and the Soviet Union should accept Kennedy’s invitation togo to the moon together, as a further step in peaceful cooperation.In Washington, Kennedy acted as if he already knew about Khrushchev’shopeful change of heart on that critical issue. JFK was already tellingNASA to begin work on a joint U.S.-Soviet lunar mission. On November12, 1963, JFK issued his National Security Action Memorandum 271,ordering NASA to implement his “September 20 proposal for broadercooperation between the United States and the USSR in outer space,including cooperation in lunar landing programs.”

That further visionary step to end the Cold War also died withPresident Kennedy. The U.S. went to the moon alone. U.S. and Sovietrockets continued to be pointed at their opposite countries rather thanbeing joined in a project for a more hopeful future. Sergei Khrushchevsaid, “I think if Kennedy had lived, we would be living in a completelydifferent world.”

In the final weeks of his presidency, President Kennedy took onemore risky step toward peace. It can be seen in relation to a meetinghe had the year before with six Quakers who visited him in his office.One thousand members of the Society of Friends had been vigiling forpeace and world order outside the White House. President Kennedy agreedto meet with six of their leaders. I have interviewed all threesurvivors of that meeting with the president 47 years ago. They remainuniformly amazed at the open way in which President Kennedy listenedand responded to their radical Quaker critique of his foreign policy.Among their challenges to him was a recommendation that the UnitedStates offer its surplus food to the People’s Republic of China. Chinawas considered an enemy nation. Yet it was also one whose people werebeset by a famine.

Kennedy said to the Quakers, “Do you mean you would feed your enemy whenhe has his hands on your throat?”

The Quakers said they meant exactly that. They reminded him it was whatJesus had said should be done. Kennedy said he knew that, and knew thatit was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t overcome the China lobbyin Washington to accomplish it.

Nevertheless, a year and a half later in the fall of 1963, againstoverwhelming opposition, Kennedy decided to sell wheat to the Russians,who had a severe grain shortage. His outraged critics said in effect tohim what he had said to the Quakers: Would you feed an enemy who hashis hands on your throat?

Vice President Lyndon Johnson said he thought Kennedy’s decision tosell wheat to Russia would turn out to be the worst political mistakehe ever made. Today JFK’s controversial decision “to feed the enemy”has been forgotten. In 1963, the wheat sale was seen as a threat to oursecurity – feeding the enemy to kill us. Yet JFK went ahead with it, asone more initiative for peace.

The violent reaction to his decision was represented on Friday morning,November 22, 1963, by a threatening, full-page advertisement addressedto him in the Dallas Morning News. The ad was bordered in black, like afuneral notice.

Among the charges of disloyalty to the nation that the ad made againstthe president was the question: “Why have you approved the sale ofwheat and corn to our enemies when you know the Communist soldiers‘travel on their stomach’ just as ours do?” JFK read the ad before theflight from Fort Worth to Dallas, pointed it out to Jacqueline Kennedy,and talked about the possibility of his being assassinated that day.“But, Jackie,” he said, “if somebody wants to shoot me from a windowwith a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?”

President Kennedy’s courageous turn from war to a strategy ofpeace provided many more than three Bay-of-Pigs-type causes for hisassassination. Because he turned toward peace with our enemies, theCommunists, he was continually at odds with his own national securitystate. Peacemaking was at the top of his agenda as president. That wasnot the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and themilitary industrial complex wanted in the White House. Given the ColdWar dogmas that gripped those dominant powers, and given Kennedy’s turntoward peace, his assassination followed as a matter of course.That is how he seemed to regard the situation – that it would soon leadto his own death. JFK was not afraid of death. As a biographerobserved, “Kennedy talked a great deal about death, and about theassassination of Lincoln.” His conscious model for strugglingtruthfully through conflict, and being ready to die as a consequence,was Abraham Lincoln. On the day when Kennedy and Khrushchev resolvedthe missile crisis, JFK told his brother, Robert, referring to theassassination of Lincoln, “This is the night I should go to thetheater.” Robert replied, “If you go, I want to go with you.” Kennedy prepared himself for the same end Lincoln met during his nightat the theater. Late at night on the June 5, 1961, plane flight back toWashington from his Vienna meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, a wearyPresident Kennedy wrote down on a slip of paper, as he was about tofall asleep, a favorite saying of his from Abraham Lincoln – really aprayer. Presidential secretary Evelyn Lincoln discovered the slip ofpaper on the floor. On it she read the words: “I know there is a God –and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I amready.”

Kennedy loved that prayer. He cited it repeatedly. More important, hemade the prayer his own. In his conflicts with Khrushchev, then moreprofoundly with the CIA and the military, he had seen a storm coming.If God had a place for him, he believed that he was ready.For at least a decade, JFK’s favorite poem had been Rendezvous, acelebration of death. Rendezvous was by Alan Seeger, an American poetkilled in World War One. The poem was Seeger’s affirmation of his ownanticipated death.

The refrain of Rendezvous, “I have a rendezvous with Death,”articulated John Kennedy’s deep sense of his own mortality. Kennedy hadexperienced a continuous rendezvous with death in anticipation of hisactual death: from the deaths of his PT boat crew members, fromdrifting alone in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean, from the earlydeaths of his brother Joe and sister Kathleen, and from the recurringnear-death experiences of his almost constant illnesses.He recited Rendezvous to his wife, Jacqueline, in 1953 on their firstnight home in Hyannis after their honeymoon. She memorized the poem,and recited it back to him over the years. In the fall of 1963, Jackietaught the words of the poem to their five-year-old daughter, Caroline.I have thought many times about what then took place in the White HouseRose Garden one beautiful fall day.

On the morning of October 5, 1963, President Kennedy met with hisNational Security Council in the Rose Garden. Caroline suddenlyappeared at her father’s side. She said she wanted to tell himsomething. He tried to divert her attention while the meetingcontinued. Caroline persisted. The president smiled and turned his fullattention to his daughter. He told her to go ahead. While the membersof the National Security Council sat and watched, Caroline looked intoher father’s eyes and said:

I have a rendezvous with DeathAt some disputed barricade,When Spring comes back with rustling shadeAnd apple-blossoms fill the air –I have a rendezvous with DeathWhen Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my handAnd lead me into his dark landAnd close my eyes and quench my breath –It may be I shall pass him still.I have a rendezvous with DeathOn some scarred slope of battered hill,When Spring comes round again this yearAnd the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ‘twere better to be deepPillowed in silk and scented down,Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,Where hushed awakenings are dear….But I’ve a rendezvous with DeathAt midnight in some flaming town,When Spring trips north again this year,And I to my pledged word am true,I shall not fail that rendezvous.

After Caroline said the poem’s final word, “rendezvous,” Kennedy’snational security advisers sat in stunned silence. One of them saidlater the bond between father and daughter was so deep “it was as ifthere was ‘an inner music’ he was trying to teach her.” JFK had heard his own acceptance of death from the lips of hisdaughter. While surrounded by a National Security Council that opposedhis breakthrough to peace, the president once again deepened his pledgenot to fail that rendezvous. If God had a place for him, he believedthat he was ready.

So how can the why of his murder give us hope?Where do we find hope when a peacemaking president is assassinated byhis own national security state?The why of the event that brings us together tonight encircles theearth. Because John Kennedy chose peace on earth at the height of theCold War, he was executed. But because he turned toward peace, in spiteof the consequences to himself, humanity is still alive and struggling.That is hopeful, especially if we understand what he went through andwhat he has given to us as his vision.At a certain point in his presidency, John Kennedy turned a corner anddidn’t look back. I believe that decisive turn toward his final purposein life, resulting in his death, happened in the darkness of the CubanMissile Crisis. Although Kennedy was already in conflict with hisnational security managers, the missile crisis was the breaking point.At that most critical moment for us all, he turned from any remainingcontrol his security managers had over him toward a deeper ethic, adeeper vision in which the fate of the earth became his priority.Without losing sight of our own best hopes in this country, he began tohome in, with his new partner, Nikita Khrushchev, on the hope of peacefor everyone on this earth – Russians, Americans, Cubans, Vietnamese,Indonesians, everyone – no exceptions. He made that commitment to lifeat the cost of his own. What a transforming story that is.And what a propaganda campaign has been waged to keep us Americans fromunderstanding that story, from telling it, and from re-telling it toour children and grandchildren.Because that’s a story whose telling can transform a nation. But when anation is under the continuing domination of an idol, namely war, it isa story that will be covered up. When the story can liberate us fromour idolatry of war, then the worshippers of the idol are going to doeverything they can to keep the story from being told. From thestandpoint of a belief that war is the ultimate power, that’s toodangerous a story. It’s a subversive story. It shows a different kindof security than always being ready to go to war. It’s unbelievable –or we’re supposed to think it is -- that a president was murdered byour own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peacethan relying on nuclear weapons. It’s unspeakable. For the sake of anation that must always be preparing for war, that story must not betold. If it were, we might learn that peace is possible without makingwar. We might even learn there is a force more powerful than war. Howunthinkable! But how necessary if life on earth is to continue.That is why it is so hopeful for us to confront the unspeakable and totell the transforming story of a man of courage, President John F.Kennedy. It is a story ultimately not of death but of life – all ourlives. In the end, it is not so much a story of one man as it is astory of peacemaking when the chips are down. That story is our story,a story of hope.

I believe it is a providential fact that the anniversary of PresidentKennedy’s assassination always falls around Thanksgiving, andperiodically on that very day. This year the anniversary of his death,two days from now, will begin Thanksgiving week.Thanksgiving is a beautiful time of year, with autumn leaves falling tocreate new life. Creation is alive, as the season turns. The earth isalive. It is not a radioactive wasteland. We can give special thanksfor that. The fact that we are still living – that the human family isstill alive with a fighting chance for survival, and for much more thanthat – is reason for gratitude to a peacemaking president, and to theunlikely alliance he forged with his enemy. So let us give thanks thisThanksgiving for John F. Kennedy, and for his partner in peacemaking,Nikita Khrushchev.

Their story is our story, a story of the courage to turn toward thetruth. Remember what Gandhi said that turned theology on its head. Hesaid truth is God. That is the truth: Truth is God. We can discover thetruth and live it out. There is nothing more powerful than the truth.The truth will set us free.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

I watched the HBO documentary "The Right Feeling Wronged" last night, and I got the same clammy, cloying feeling that haunted me throughout the 2008 presidential campaign. The documentary, filmed by Nancy Pelosi's daughter, profiles McCain rallies and the stunningly prejudiced, backwards knuckle-draggers who attended them. Full of hatred and violent tendencies, these people were a scary, uneducated, shockingly stupid bunch. In Mississippi a truck driver said, "I ain't gonna vote for no nigger." In Pennsylvania a handyman said, "I don't want no one taxing me out of business." When informed that Obama intended to increase taxes on the wealthiest 1% of individuals only, the handyman thought about that for a moment (no doubt, overloading all of his available neurosynapses), and then replied, "Well, I don't want nobody helping me out. That's socialism." In Virginia, at a youth church rally, a 20-year-old who was wearing a tee shirt which read "Nobama, no socilism" [sic], was asked for his definition of socialism (this after being told that he had misspelled the word on his tee shirt). The kid tried to look it up on his cell phone and then sputtered, "Well...I know that it's somewheres in-between communism and that other thing...you know...what's that called? You know, where Hitler was." In St. Louis a teabagger attacked an Obama supporter and wrestled him to the ground as the other GOP fascists cheered him on. In Ohio a middle-aged white man called Obama the antichrist. In Pennsylvania some farmers claimed that Obama, if elected, was going to personally come to their houses and steal their guns from them.

Pelosi's kid could have made them look even worse by asking more direct and penetrating questions, but she backed off and seemed satisfied to let them indict themselves. I was reminded of the time a couple of pro-lifers had the audacity to knock on my door and insist I vote Republican in the coming election. I relished the opportunity to ground their logic into a pulp. The conversation went something like this.

"The GOP is pro-life; the Democrats are murderers," sniffed the Bible-thumpers.

"Really?" I smirked. "Then why does the GOP support the death penalty? Thousands of innocent people are electrocuted every year in this country. Why does the GOP support the NRA? Thousands of innocent citizens die every year from gun accidents. Why does the GOP support the war in Iraq? Thousands of Americans have died unnecessarily in an immoral, unjust war there. Why is the GOP against health care for all? Millions die each year because they have no health care. It seems to me the GOP wants to protect human beings only before they actually become human beings. I guess the GOP is anti-abortion because it wants to make sure there are a good supply of Americans to enjoy killing off once they are born and become human beings...or fresh meat, as McCain supporters call them."

The Bible thumpers' jaws dropped open, as they attempted to formulate a response which would impugn my patriotism and allegiance to the one true God. As their cerebellum (what little there is) gyrated madly, I plowed over more of their sacred ground. "Since you call yourselves Bible experts, you must be familiar with the passages which implore us to be our brothers' keepers and to honor the least among us. As applied to health care, that seems to suggest that Christ would want all of his children to be saved from the suffering of ill health, even if it meant that those who are more well-off should pay for it."

At this point the Bible thumpers' faces turned from red to purple to ashen, as they racked their brains for the words that would put me in my place. "You're one of those...leftists," sputtered one of them.

"Yes, I am," I stated calmly, "and, thanks to you Republicans, private property is more valuable than intellectual freedom in this country, so if you don't get off my property now, I'll call the cops. And because your leaders value the Second Amendment much more than the First Amendment, if you come back I can shoot you with my concealed weapon."

The angry primitives scampered away to assualt my neighbors with more GOP drivel.

About Me

I am a freelance writer. My current novel, "The President's Mortician," is for sale on amazon.com, barnesand noble.com, and my publisher's website, Neverland Publishing. To read more about me and the book, visit neverlandpc.com and click on "Titles."